Honey, You Won’t BELIEVE What Hosts Are Charging for World Cup Weekend

Y’all.

I was minding my own business at Piggly Wiggly last Tuesday, squeezing avocados and thinking about absolutely nothing, when my phone buzzed with a message from my friend Dolores in New Jersey.

“LORETTA. Look at this listing. LOOK AT IT.”

So I looked.

Forty. Thousand. Dollars. For three nights in a house near MetLife Stadium during the World Cup Final weekend.

I nearly dropped my avocados right there in the produce aisle. The woman behind me thought I was having a medical event. “Ma’am, are you okay?” she asked. Honey, no. No I am not okay. Nobody should be okay with this.

But wait, it gets better.

The Price Reveals That Made Me Lose My Sweet Tea

Now I don’t like to gossip, but when CBS News reported that Airbnb listings near MetLife Stadium were hitting $40,000 for the Final weekend, the internet absolutely lost its mind. And honestly? I was right there losing my mind with them.

One person online said, and I quote, “$26K for a 3 day stay in NEW JERSEY is diabolical and hilarious.” And you know what? Where is the lie?

New Jersey, y’all. Not the French Riviera. Not a private island in the Maldives. New Jersey. Where the state flower is the common blue violet and the unofficial state smell is the Turnpike on a hot day. Forty thousand dollars.

But New Jersey is not even the wildest one. Oh no, honey. Let me take you on a little tour of what hosts across America are apparently thinking is reasonable.

In Kansas City, one Airbnb spiked to $20,000 per night. Per. Night. A five-bedroom loft that normally goes for about $1,500 for two nights? During the World Cup? Nine thousand four hundred and fourteen dollars for that same two nights. I checked the listing three times because I thought surely there was a typo. There was not a typo.

In Los Angeles, a place across from SoFi Stadium that normally runs about $1,000 for a couple nights is now listed at over $10,000 for the opening US match. The Real Deal reported some properties near SoFi seeing 1,000% price increases. One thousand percent. I had to get my reading glasses to make sure I was counting the zeros correctly.

And sweet baby Jesus, Mexico City. A room that costs $157 on a normal night in late May somehow transforms into a $3,882 luxury item the moment the tournament starts. Same room. Same bed. Same view of the same street. Twenty-five times the price.

The audacity.

The Internet Had Feelings About This

Now when The Travel published their story with the headline “Please Don’t Come,” I knew this had crossed from real estate into entertainment. And entertainment is my lane.

People online started saying things like “I’m about to rent out my closet for $10K” and honestly, at these rates, that closet might be a bargain.

One of my favorites was somebody who posted, “Ridiculous, that’s not what the World Cup is about.” And bless their heart, they are correct. The World Cup is about soccer. But apparently it is also about turning your three-bedroom ranch in East Rutherford into a five-figure luxury experience.

My friend Barbara from book club, who has never watched a soccer match in her entire life, texted me asking how to list her basement apartment in Dallas. Barbara. The woman who still has a VCR hooked up to her television. The woman who calls every streaming service “the Netflix.” She wants to host international soccer fans in her basement because she heard someone down the street was listing theirs for $4,000 a week.

“Barbara,” I said, “do you even have WiFi down there?”

“I have the regular internet,” she said.

Lord have mercy.

The Hosts Who Are Actually Being Smart About This

Now here is where I have to give credit where credit is due, because not everybody has lost their minds.

Airbnb themselves quietly pointed out that about 75% of available listings in the New Jersey area are priced under $500 a night. Ninety-five percent of actual bookings so far are under that same $500 mark. So the $40,000 listings are making headlines, but they are not making bookings.

You know who IS making bookings? The hosts charging reasonable prices for clean, comfortable homes with good WiFi and a welcome guide in four languages.

My neighbor Tammy has a little two-bedroom casita that she rents on Airbnb. Nothing fancy. Good sheets, a Keurig, and a binder full of restaurant recommendations. She priced her World Cup dates at $350 a night, about double her normal rate. She was booked within 72 hours by a family coming from Guadalajara for the group stage.

“They were so excited,” Tammy told me. “They asked if I could recommend a good place to watch the matches with other fans. I told them about three sports bars within walking distance.”

That is hosting, y’all. That is what this is supposed to look like.

Meanwhile, the $40,000 McMansion in New Jersey is sitting there empty with zero reviews, waiting for a booking that might never come. Which, if you ask me, is poetic justice.

The Scramble Is Real

What I am hearing from my various sources, and by sources I mean Martha, Dolores, Barbara, the woman at the nail salon, and approximately forty-seven people in the Airbnb Hosts Behaving Badly Facebook group, is that the scramble right now is something else.

People who have never thought about hosting are suddenly buying mattresses and researching smart locks. People who have been hosting for years are hiring extra cleaning crews and updating their house rules to include “no vuvuzelas after 10 PM.” One host in Kansas City posted that she added a clause about maximum flag size on the front porch because last time her city hosted a big event, somebody hung a banner so large it blocked the neighbor’s driveway.

I swear on my mama’s fried chicken recipe, you cannot make this stuff up.

And then there is the drama between hosts and their neighbors. Oh honey. If you think the pricing is wild, wait until you hear about the neighborhood group texts. One host in Dallas told me her neighbor threatened to call code enforcement if she listed her house during the World Cup. Another host said her HOA sent a letter specifically banning short-term rentals during tournament dates, which, as my friend Jed over at StaySTRA would tell you, may or may not be legally enforceable depending on your city.

The receipts, y’all. The receipts are piling up.

My Predictions for This Summer

Now I am not a fortune teller. I am just a woman with a Bluetooth headset, a sweet tea habit, and an unreasonable amount of information about what hosts across America are up to. But here is what I think is going to happen.

The $40,000 listings are going to sit empty. Nobody is paying that, and the hosts who priced that high are going to panic in late May and slash their rates by 80%. I have seen this movie before. Every major event, some host prices their place like it is the Ritz-Carlton, gets zero bookings, and then fire-sales it at the last minute for less than they could have gotten if they had just priced reasonably from the start.

The hosts who priced fairly, prepared their homes, stocked the fridge with local beer, and wrote welcome guides in Spanish and Portuguese? They are going to have the best summer of their hosting lives. Five-star reviews. Repeat bookings. Stories they will tell for years.

And Barbara? Bless her heart. I am going to help Barbara get that basement WiFi situation sorted out because she is going to make that $4,000 and she is going to spend every penny of it telling people about how she hosted a lovely couple from Berlin who taught her how to say “goal” in German.

It is “Tor,” by the way. I looked it up.

The Moral of the Story

1. If you are charging $40,000 for a house in New Jersey, you need to have a conversation with yourself and possibly a therapist.
2. If you are charging a reasonable rate and preparing a genuinely welcoming home, you are about to have the time of your life.
3. If you are Barbara and you still have “the regular internet,” please call your provider before June.
4. The World Cup only comes to your city once in a lifetime. Host like you mean it.

For the full breakdown of what is actually happening in each host city, the smart folks at StaySTRA have you covered. Check out our World Cup STR forecast for the numbers I am absolutely not qualified to discuss, our city-by-city regulations guide so you don’t accidentally break the law, and our tech stack guide so your WiFi situation is better than Barbara’s.

We do our best to keep things accurate around here, but stories evolve faster than my neighbor’s conspiracy theories. Always verify the details before making any decisions, and for goodness sake, price your listing like a reasonable human being.

Allegedly. But also absolutely.

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